Pumpkins!

Below is something I wrote last year around this time. This was before I had created my blog. After you have read this, you will be prepared for tomorrow's post...

(hang on...vroom!! Back in time!!)

I’d like to start with a question…when was Halloween? (and you all say…why, it was the 31st of October!) And then I say…what day is it today? (and YOU say…well, it’s November 26th.) Very good! That puts almost a month between the official jack-o-lantern day and today.

So I simply MUST ask the question…why do I still enjoy the *pleasure* of viewing these timeless orange gourds where ‘ere I walk? It would indeed be a pleasure…if they still had some semblance of the happy shape we love and adore, but they have been transformed into piles of black and orange *moving* sludge. And I do say moving, because a rotting pumpkin seems to breed its OWN little swarm of insects, no matter what Fransesco Redi says.

There are two ways to get to my apartment door. About three doors down, there is the stealth pumpkin. You cannot see this pumpkin until it is too late to hold your breath…it sits in a recessed doorway. The exhibitionist pumpkin sits at the very end of the walk on the corner, so a person can enjoy it for their entire journey. It might have been more than one pumpkin at one point, but now it sits like burnt squash on a bed of leaves. Yum! The trick here is to breathe normally until you think you’re in range, then stop. But it changes daily…so beware.

Route number two goes by people’s patio walls. There is only one here, but so disturbing I try not to look. This pumpkin began on the 6-foot high wall of the patio…perfect to watch collapse on itself at eye level. Until one day, it wasn’t there anymore. I was happy. There was actually a smile on my face. Until I passed the edge and saw the streak of pumpkin blood slimed down the side of the wall with a yucky pumpkin splat on the ground.

I don’t understand. Is it laziness? Possibly. (I have waited too late at times and had to use a shovel) Is it interest, so that one can post a video like the link I have below? (nope…there’s at most 5 on YouTube, and there are more pumpkins than that) Or it might me, that in this world of concrete, postage stamp lawns, and a sincere desire to be GREEN, people want their own little compost heap. Now they can say “I’m doing my part for the environment.” I’m sorry to break it to you folks…it’s concrete. It won’t go anywhere.

Here you can watch a pumpkin melt :P
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GUKRzyDMyfA&feature=related